Raiders and Broncos face the past of a classic match

analysis

By Nick Campton

Topic:NRL

Both Brisbane and Canberra were changed by their extra‑time semi‑final last year. (Getty Images: Mark Nolan)

There are some defeats so cruel a team cannot survive even if it doesn't kill them and some triumphs that never leave a team even if they go on to greater glories and sometimes, if we're lucky, both things happen at the same time.

That's what Canberra and Brisbane are both reckoning with ahead of their match tomorrow night, the first meeting for the two clubs since last year's double‑extra time semi‑final that ended with Broncos winning 29‑28 in the 94th minute.

It's scheduling malpractice on the NRL's part that we've had to wait so long for a sequel, which now has a direct‑to‑video quality when it could have been a blockbuster.

Brisbane and Canberra went to the great beyond in their golden point finals match and it was Reece Walsh who led the Broncos to the promised land.

Perhaps they hoped this match would have finals implications but history didn't say it was likely.

Canberra and Brisbane are two of the NRL's great boomtowns — the Raiders haven't made the top four in consecutive seasons in 30 years and the Broncos haven't done it in 20.

Each club has spent 2026 trying to come to terms with what happened to them, both on that day and since, and both have struggled to carry the weight of what came next.

It was match where Canberra's wave broke and broke hard just as Brisbane's was beginning to crest.

That crest became a tsunami in the weeks to come, as part of a series of matches that can stand equal with any in NRL history.

The Raiders win was their greatest escape, as they came from 16‑points down with 15 minutes remaining in a game that defied belief even as it was happening.

The Panthers win in the preliminary final was their most cathartic as they exorcised the demons of their 2023 grand final loss with their best all‑round performance of the finals.

The win over Melbourne in the decider was their most glorious, capping as astounding a run to paradise as any team has ever had. They will almost certainly win more grand finals in the future but they will definitely never win one like that again.

After a 20‑year drought, it was the premiership of a lifetime, great enough that even a fanbase as varied, voracious and expectant as the Broncos was able to forgive their rough start to life as champions.

But a start was all they could forgive because they cannot forget. Their eyes had seen the glory and the coming of Reece Walsh and they basked in the memories of Brisbane reaching a level of brilliance, ferocity and belief that made them a terrible and wonderful sight to behold.

Brisbane finished off the run of a lifetime to win the 2025 premiership. (AAP: Mark Evans)

Such play would never be sustainable over a full season because you cannot spring your way through a marathon, but in 2026 they've barely got out of a jog and the turn against them has been harsh, swift and brutal.

A spate of injuries in the early part of the season exposed the top‑heavy nature of their roster and despite a few brave efforts to start they eventually tipped right over and head to Canberra with 12 losses in their last 13 games.

Old heads like Ben Hunt and Adam Reynolds look like they went on a year too long and younger ones, like Ezra Mam, have shown the ability to replace them but not the maturity or consistency.

After a year where he went from a train and trial deal to playing Test and Origin football and the winning try‑scorer in the grand final, Gehamet Shibasaki has looked a lot more like the journeyman he was than the premiership hero he became.

The departing Payne Haas has been strong but not the superhuman we have come to know and with him leaving for Souths and Reynolds retiring it will be a new look Bronco next year — maybe for better, maybe for worse but certainly for different.

It has been a listless premiership defence from the Broncos. (Getty Images: Bradley Kanaris)

It's clear that victory has defeated them in a way Canberra, Penrith and Melbourne never could. The merciless march of time is a forever war, but for Brisbane the guns fell silent because they had no more worlds left to conquer.

That has brought them here, where the chance of going from premiers to wooden spooners is somehow possible which is made all the more maddening because the qualities they showed in that golden September still lurk within even if they rarely show themselves.

That sole win in their last 13 starts was against the might of Penrith, away, on a waterlogged track they wouldn't let racehorses run on with Walsh again leading the way.

It has been a difficult and stop‑start season for their fullback, who has a boundless energy that is sometimes too great for concentration to control.

His struggles was best typified by his last act for the year — Walsh threw a pass that was intercepted and taken the length of the field by Alofiana Khan‑Pereira for a try, but only because he battled hard to get into position despite suffering a serious ankle injury only moments before, one which ended his season prematurely.

Losing Walsh means the remote possibility of Brisbane going from first to last must be entertained. This is a team who have been waiting for this season to end for some time now and they are heavy outsiders for Friday against a Canberra team who have plenty to play for.

The reason for the Raiders motivation is not so much their finals hopes, which are desolate enough they're relying on Wests Tigers to win another game, but because of the home farewell to Josh Papali'i, the club's most capped player and modern day favourite son.

It will give the Raiders a north star to aim for, something Brisbane stopped looking for a while ago.

The visitors are waiting for this season to end while the home side wish it could keep going — Simi Sasagi, their best player this year, has a tenderised shoulder but has kept playing because he wanted to suit up with Papali'i as many times as he could.

Canberra will mark Josh Papali'i's final home match on Friday night. (Getty Images: Mark Nolan)

The veteran prop is the best player the Raiders have ever had who has not won a premiership and as a shining example that greatness can be possible in Canberra he's an important symbol for a team that has to continually prove itself to sceptical outsiders.

His achievements mean Papali'i is a living piece of club history and blood and tears will mix together to make it a sentimental day, as so many days are for Canberra because this a club that rides their emotions like no other.

After a difficult season, which began in the shadow of the finals loss to Brisbane and the defeat to Cronulla which followed, this is a retreat into their own hearts and that's the place they always feel strongest.

Last year, their premiership hopes could not have been more brutally buried unless Brisbane had thrown them a shovel, pulled out a gun and told the Raiders to start digging.

That bled into 2026 as Canberra took a long journey from minor premiers last year to second last a few months ago before settling back into the middle of the pack they know so well but after last year it was hard not to want for more.

Canberra have failed to match last year's minor premiership victory. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

This is a team with the second‑longest premiership drought in the league and chances to end it are hard to come by.

It has given this year a lost quality, typified by the "self‑entitled and undisciplined" football that Ricky Stuart believes cost them at the start of the season, when they fell into a four‑match losing streak from which their finals chances never really recovered.

Throw in the loss of Jamal Fogarty, his replacement Ethan Sanders going through the peaks of valleys so many young halfbacks must endure, an injury run that seemed restricted solely to second rowers and a serious ill‑suitedness to the set restart madness that engulfed the early parts of the year and it became overwhelming.

Their fall has not been as hard as Brisbane's but neither is it from such a towering height, which paradoxically increases the pain instead of softening the blow. The Broncos, at least, have what came after that day in the capital.

The Raiders have more to play for than the Broncos on Friday night. (Getty Images: Mark Nolan)

There's a chance that being up 28‑12 with 15 minutes left, or the stolen moments before the full‑time siren penalty that allowed Walsh to level the scores is as good as it gets for Canberra for a while.

That, like the seconds before Jamal Fogarty's extra time try was correctly chalked off the board even as Channel Nine had literally started the countdown to cut to the overdue 6pm news with the club's song ringing through the stadium, erroneously heralding a victory which never arrived, could be as close as they'll come to the promised land for some time.

A win against the Broncos tomorrow won't exorcise those demons any more than a loss would compound them. The blood is still on the blade but it has dried. What came before hangs over the match, but enough time has passed that it does not loom.

Canberra will celebrate the past as Brisbane wait for the future to arrive and both will continue to grapple with the legacy of a game that reaches far beyond one autumn afternoon.

Both teams, to some extent, have set themselves on fire as they tried to pass the torch from then to now and in different ways they are still running on it's fumes even a year later.

For the Broncos it is intoxicating in a way they'll always remember. For the Raiders it's just toxic in a way they cannot forget.

They are both of them haunted, one by what was and one by what might have been.

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